Which one is more appealing for search engines? name1.domain.com name2.domain.com vs. domain.com/name1 domain.com/name2 Do the search engines care? Will I get penalized one way or another? Is there any other pros/cons to using one method over another? Thanks in advance.
I think this question is answered a lot of times now.Try searching the forum for the answer to your question. I dont know what penalty are you talking about.
I actually did do a search, but the search feature on these boards is somewhat lacking. I later found a similar thread bumped up shortly after posting my thread. I attempted to delete my initial post, but I couldn't find particular option. I decided instead to just let the thread die. Guess that's not happening now.
Here's the deal. Search engines (Google for sure) will rank a specific page about apples best when the content on the rest of the site is about apples as well. Meaning, SE's take into consideration the content on your entire domain when determining how to rank even a specific page. With that being said, it's best (usually) to use subfolders when the content is similar, and subdomains (seen as a different website) when the content is different.